“and as educators, we needed to prepareour students for their future, not ourgrandparents’ or even our own world.”The data was on her side. Evenback then, the video game industrywas bigger than Hollywood, in termsof revenue, and growing fast. Andthe Northeast was quickly becominga hotbed for game-developmentcompanies, with Montreal, Boston, andNew York each hosting at least a fewfirms. But the academic world hadn’tcaught on.

Today, DeMarle’s idea seems
prescient. The video game market is
now worth about $100 billion. And
Champlain’s Game Studio has risen
to the upper echelons of its field. Last
year, the program was ranked No. 14
by the Princeton Review among more
than 500 game-design undergraduate
programs in the United States.

It begs the question: How did a
small college in Vermont do this?

Roger Perry, president of Champlain College from 1992 to 2005, says the school has adistinct DNA that traces back to itsorigins. “The Game Studio reflectsthe entrepreneurial spirit and digitalhistory of the college,” he said. “It justdidn’t come out of the blue. We startedcomputer programming way back inthe 1960s. We also prided ourselves onbringing programs to the market longbefore others did.”In the late ’90s, DeMarle joinedChamplain to start one such program:a degree in multimedia and graphicdesign. DeMarle had becomefascinated by computer graphics whilein college, graduating with a BFAfrom SUN Y New Paltz in 1979, andan MFA from Rochester Institute ofTechnology in 1986. Three years later,she moved to Vermont, where shecreated animation for companies suchas IBM. In 1998, she launched the

LEFTAnn DeMarle,
who pushed the
college in 2002 to
launch a video game
degree program. “As
educators, we needed
to prepare our students
for their future, not our
grandparents’ or even
our own world.”

OPPOSITE, TOP

Jonathan Ferguson
teaches a class on
game history. On this
day, students focused
on Magnavox Odyssey,
one of the earliest
commercial home
video game consoles.

OPPOSITE, BOTTOM

Experimenting with
virtual reality and the
sense of smell. Students
were collaborating on
the project with two
Burlington businesses
who saw commercial
potential in the idea.

FACT FILE

The Game Studio at
Champlain College

2004: Launches with 35 students,
three faculty

2017: More than 425 students, 13 faculty

National status: Ranked 14th nationally
among undergraduate game-design
schools by the Princeton Review
in 2017

Hiring rate: 81 percent of class of 2016
employed in gaming industry within
six months

Source of talent for the following:

Sony Studios, Electronic Arts, Warner
Bros. Games/Turbine, and many other
major companies

Quote: “Game design is an exciting field
and programs are springing up all over
the world,” said Princeton Review
Editor-in-Chief Robert Franek. “The
top schools on our list have outstanding
faculties and great facilities ... ”